Sunday, February 04, 2007

 

Notes To Myself

If you keep your misfortunes hidden, you won't give occasion for your enemies to laugh at you. Euripides fr. 460 Nauck neatly ties these two threads together:
It is a painful thing for someone to fall into shameful ruin; but if this should happen, one should conceal and cover it up well, and not announce these things to the whole world; for such things become a source of laughter to enemies.

λύπη μὲν ἄτῃ περιπεσεῖν αἰσχρᾷ τινι·
εἰ δ᾽ οὖν γένοιτο, χρὴ περιστεῖλαι καλῶς
κρύπτοντα καὶ μὴ πᾶσι κηρύσσειν τάδε·
γέλως γὰρ ἐχθροῖς γίγνεται τὰ τοιάδε.
Related posts:

To the collection of references on the insatiable nature of avarice, add Xenophon, Ways and Means 4.7 (tr. E.C. Marchant):
No one ever yet possessed so much silver as to want no more; if a man finds himself with a huge amount of it, he takes as much pleasure in burying the surplus as in using it.

ἀργύριον δὲ οὐδείς πω οὕτω πολὺ ἐκτήσατο, ὥστε μη έτι προσδεῖσθαι· ἀλλ᾽ ἤν τισι γένητα παμπληθές, τὸ περιττεῦον κατορύττοντες οὐδὲν ἧττον ἥδονται ἢ χρώμενοι αὐτῷ.


U.S. Forest Service Silvics Manual links for the most common trees on my woodlot:

On February 3, 1945, my Uncle Phil (S/Sgt. P.R. Paiement, 3rd Platoon "E" Co. 2nd Battalion, 511th Parachute Inf., 11th Airborne Division) jumped behind Japanese lines in Luzon, Philippines, as part of a mission to liberate a civilian internment camp.

Thoreau in Walden wrote, "I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually." When he returned home from the war, Uncle Phil did just that, with his friend and fellow veteran Albert Brown. The two designed and built a trailer home for $1200 and lived in it while they attended the University of Maine. The Portland Press Herald (Sept. 9, 1948) told the story on the front page.



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